X troubles (possibly radeon related)

[Fred Cox]

All right, let's start over, knowing that since this
is all going through the mailing list, the archives
will save me if Yahoo is snippy.

Currently, I am in the position of not being able to
upgrade my ports, due to the machine being unusable in
short order if I start Xorg 6.9.0.

I don't feel comfortable in this position, since I am
not able to easily incorporate security fixes or
feature upgrades for any ports.

I don't think I'm the only person in this situation,
from what I've found searching the web.

It's my understanding that the drivers are part of the
kernel.  The output of a make buildkernel seems to
confirm that understanding.

One of my attempts to figure out what was killing my
system was to not upgrade the kernel from FreeBSD 6.0
release, but to upgrade the ports.  That, and every
other setup I tried that involved upgrading Xorg,
killed my system.

Perhaps my ignorance of exactly how Xorg works is
confusing me, but this seems to point to Xorg 6.9.0's
interaction with the radeon driver, not the radeon
driver, which I don't believe I upgraded.

If the 6.8.2 code can work with the FreeBSD 6.0
release  radeon driver for the X300 chipset, but 6.9.0
doesn't, it seems that a little investigation can
point to a quick solution.  However, the people who
have the knowledge will need to work with the people
who have the hardware and the willingness to help
investigate.

If this is faulty logic, please point out where it's
wrong, so that more people can understand the system.

Fred

--- Eric Anholt <eric at anholt.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-04-08 at 20:07 -0700, Fred Cox wrote:
> > --- Eric Anholt <eric at anholt.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sat, 2006-04-08 at 12:58 -0700, Fred Cox
> wrote:
> > > > Several people have reported problems with
> X.org
> > > 6.9
> > > > and Radeon X300, which were "solved" by going
> back
> > > to
> > > > 6.8.2.  This includes total machine lockup
> with
> > > the
> > > > default vga driver as well as various ati and
> > > radeon
> > > > drivers.
> > > > 
> > > > Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any
> > > visible
> > > > action on the problem.  I get no response when
> I
> > > email
> > > > the Xorg maintainer.
> > > > 
> > > > I don't think they want to believe they've
> broken
> > > > something.  They want to blame the drivers.
> > > 
> > > I did respond to your email.  I don't have any
> > > response from you.
> > 
> > I found this message in Yahoo's (overly agressive)
> > bulk folder, but nothing else from you.  Could you
> > resend?
> 
> If you use an email service that throws away good
> mail, you should get a
> better service, not ask people to resend mail. :P
> 
> > > message gave a
> > > line with "vga0" from
> > > dmesg that's irrelevant to X's behavior, making
> me
> > > suspect that you were
> > > still using the radeon driver in X, not vga as
> you
> > > claimed.
> > 
> > I never told FreeBSD to use the Radeon driver, and
> > since it doesn't mention radeon in dmesg, I
> assumed
> > that was what's going on.
> > 
> > For people who aren't as deeply steeped in the
> code,
> > can you tell us how to tell which driver is being
> > used?
> 
> /var/log/Xorg.0.log is X's equivalent of dmesg
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf is where you configure what
> drivers to use, if you
> do.
> 
> > >  The radeon
> > > driver in 6.9 (as with 6.8.2, 6.8.1, 6.8.0,
> 6.7.0,
> > > XFree86 4.4, etc.)
> > > had major issues.  The major issues have changed
> > > from release to
> > > release, as fixes were applied for some chipset
> that
> > > broke another.
> > > It's really actually hard to get this memory
> mapping
> > > stuff right for
> > > ATI.  It's quite possible that benh has fixed
> them
> > > now in the latest
> > > releases of the ATI driver -- he's studied the
> > > problems more in-depth
> > > than anyone before, so the latest radeon driver
> is
> > > probably good when
> > > combined with a good DRM and good DRI drivers.
> > 
> > Are these required for simple 2D X interactions,
> such
> > as fluxbox and Firefox would use?
> 
> They are not required, but enabling 3D acceleration
> (which is the
> default) places a dependency on the DRM for 2D
> drawing, which changes
> code paths significantly.
> 
> > >  We
> > > have none of these in
> > > FreeBSD currently.
> > > 
> > 
> > Is there any plan to get this stuff fixed?
> 
> Sure, we intend to bring in the latest greatest
> upstream bits.  Is there
> a schedule?  Of course not.
> 
> -- 
> Eric Anholt                     anholt at FreeBSD.org
> eric at anholt.net                
> eric.anholt at intel.com
> 


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